The Enchanter and The Lion

Chapter 1 - Prisoner

Maeve's head was pounding and her mouth felt like it was full of cotton. Strange. She didn't remember drinking enough to have a hangover this bad. Or drinking at all for that matter. The last thing she remembered was walking through the hall toward her room at the Conclave. 

"Ugh," she groaned. She started to open her eyes and found gray stone in front of them. She noticed the cold seeping in through her pants and realized she was kneeling on the floor. What the...? 

A bright green light caught her attention just to the left of her field of vision. Was that coming from her hand?! She tried to lift it closer to her face to see better, but it was heavy. That was when she noticed the chains circling her wrists. Her eyes snapped fully open and she lifted her head; too quickly, which sent the room spinning and made her close her eyes again. When it stopped and she was able to focus she could take in the arrayed swords leveled at her from the semicircle of soldiers in front of her. She swallowed hard and willed herself to absolute stillness. Just like in the Circle. Small, quiet, not worth noticing.

She briefly scanned the symbol worn on the breast plates of the soldiers before her - an eye with bursts of flame rising from it with a sword pierced through it. It wasn't anything she recognized. She was about to open her mouth to ask what was going on when a door banged open and her eyes swung to the two women who walked in. 

The first was most definitely a warrior. As if the sword at her side hadn't given that away, she carried herself with the strength and authority that Maeve had long associated with Templars. Her black hair  was cut short and her dark brown eyes were narrowed at Maeve with a disapproving frown on her face - also a classic Templar expression when their gaze was turned upon a mage. Yep, definitely a warrior. Likely Templar. But she wasn't wearing the order's armor...she had the same symbol on her breastplate as the other soldiers in the room.

As the warrior circled behind her, she had to bring every ounce of her will to bear to not swivel her head to try and follow the movement. Instead she focused on the other woman who had entered. A halo of red hair could be seen under the hood framing her face and her light armor covered a lithe body. She carried herself with the grace of a dancer, but was no less predatory than the warrior as she walked toward her. Likely an assassin, Maeve thought.

"Tell me why we shouldn't just kill you now," the warrior demanded with a heavy Nevarran accent from behind her. She sucked in her breath, but held her tongue. "The Conclave is destroyed and everyone who attended is dead. Everyone, but you!" the woman accused, finally coming to stand in front of her.

Her jaw dropped and she finally found words. "Dead? What do you mean everyone's dead?!" A sudden flash of green light pulsed from her left hand accompanied by a searing pain that shot from it up into her chest. Like someone had pressed a hot brand into her palm. She cried out and hunched over the hand, instinctively sending a tendril of healing magic toward it.

The woman ignored her and grabbed the hand in question, demanding, "Explain this." She lifted Maeve's hand up in front of her eyes where a mark was etched into her skin, almost as if it really had been branded there; three semicircles in the middle of her palm, one on top of the other, with a vertical line extending from the last one down onto her wrist.  The green glowing pulses came from the mark.

Maeve lifted her eyes from her hand and stared up at the woman, dumbfounded. "I can't," she replied in a whisper.

"Can't, or won't?" the woman accused, dropping the hand which fell limply back to her lap. 

"Can't," she insisted, more strongly this time. "I have no idea what that is, or how it got there."  

"LIAR!" the woman yelled at her, grabbing the front of her shirt. The assassin finally stepped in and pushed the warrior back, saying, "Stop! We need her Cassandra!"

The red-haired woman turned to face her. "Do you remember what happened? How this began?"

Maeve looked at the floor, trying to think. She closed her eyes. "I..I remember running. Being chased by...things. And then, a woman? Reaching out to me. And....that's it." 

They both just stared at her, scrutinizing the truth of her words.

"Go to the forward camp, Leliana," Cassandra said.  "I will take her to the rift and we'll test the apostate's theory."

The rift? She was fairly certain she didn't want to travel anywhere with Cassandra, but being chained on the floor at sword point probably meant she wasn't going to have a choice. 

"What did happen?" she asked as Cassandra bent to unchain her and then bound her wrists with thick rope in front of her. 

"It will be easier to show you," she replied as she helped Maeve to her feet and led her forward and out of the door.